thoughts.on.code

So, I’ve been playing around with advertisements on this blog since the beginning, mainly so I could understand what it is all about. Over the last two years I think I’ve made about $20 total. A couple of months ago I put an Amazon advertisement on my sidebar, which did not really do much as it was in a horrible location. The links to specific books seem to work well, as people have bought some books through them.

So, I am always kinda looking around to see what is out there in the internet advertising realm. Recently, Amazon started what it is calling aStore, a way for normal people (as well as people like me) to create a store using Amazon’s product catalog. It’s an interesting idea, so I thought a little while on what I would like to see in a Amazon store, and came up with Coders Haven.

The idea behind Coder’s Haven is simple: out of all the computer programming books out there on Amazon, take the best ones and put them all together on a single page. The best ones in this case are the best books that either I have personally read, or a colleague has read and not been able to shut about it. I think when you look at the set you will see why. The other idea is to change the list out every month or two. So right now the books are decidely agnostic on the whole technology stack. They are more meta type books, and for good reason: I want only the best of the best right now, and these are the best.

aStore is currently in Beta, and it shows. The administration aspects of the store are a little difficult, such as only being able to hand pick the front page items, and then only being able to pick 9 items. I really wanted to hand pick the entire store, but they only allow keyword filtering on the subsequent category pages.

So, go take a look… if nothing else it would be interesting to hear other people’s thoughts on this.